Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Today I’m going to show you two of my Morgan Taylor polishes, both
glitters, but very different. They are both from The Royal Life collection.

The first one is To Rule or Not to Rule. It’s a magenta base with
different sizes of magenta glitter. The formula is good, but the bigger
glitters make it difficult to get close to the cuticles without actually
touching them.

It takes two coats to achieve full opacity and the drying time between
the layers is good. I applied a layer of topcoat before I took my pictures, and
that made the glitters come beautifully to life.

Two coats plus a layer of topcoat:

I love the way the glitters swim in the jelly!

The colour is really nice too.

The second polish up is Wrapped in Riches. It’s a teal almost turquoise
glitter in a teal jelly base. The polish is really easy to work with and covers
well in two coats. the drying time is really good.

Here’s two coats and a layer of topcoat:

A girl can never get too much glitter!

This is a really cool glitter, I like the colour and the way it looks.

Verdict:

This is two cool glitters from The Royal Life collection. I like them
both.

Number of coats: 2
Drying time: Fast

Finish: Glitter in jelly

Overall impression: Good to
work with, glitters that don’t require layering

Monday, December 29, 2014

My Spell Collection is slowly growing. I started out with two, and now
I’ve got three more – all of them received in monthly packages from Norway
Nails.

Toe of Frog is olive green – not a colour I’d normally chose. But it’s
nice to be forced outside the comfort zone once in a while!

The polish looks thin in the bottle, but it only took two coats to make
it opaque. It dries up to a silky matte finish, that’s quite easy on the eyes.

Here’s two coats and no topcoat in my lightbox:

It’s hard to see the shimmers that are going on, but you can see them if
I turn on the flash for you:

That’s pretty, yes? And the polish also changes character when a shiny
topcoat is added – I like it much better with topcoat. That’s how it usually is
for me with mattes – I love shiny things, so topcoat usually makes them
prettier for me. Here’s what it looks like with topcoat:

And a low light picture:

I wanted to make this mani fun! I found my little box of fimo fruit
slices, found a bunch of green(ish) fruits and stuck them onto my nails with
topcoat. I love this end result:

The low light picture:

Every bottle of Spell Polish comes with a little card with a rhyme on. Here’s
the card that came with Toe of Frog:

Here’s another one of the prototypes I bought when Laura from Ellagee offered
unreleased prototypes. I must admit I was quite impressed with the prototypes I
received. Mystery polishes are my Kryptonite – I love surprises, and especially
nice surprises like this one!

This midnight blue glitter is so crammed into the bottle that it works
on its own. The formula is obviously a bit on the thick side, but I had no
issues applying it anyway. It only took two coats to achieve desired opacity
and the drying time was fast, also considering the fact that the layers went on
a little thick. And girls, I love this glitter!

Take a look at two coats and a layer of topcoat; the pic is taken with
flash:

It’s almost even prettier in low lights.

Here’s an intentionally blurry picture to show off the holo glitters:

I added some snowflakes. I had a sheet of snowflake stickers that I
thought would go perfectly with this blue prettiness. I even added a Christmas
tree on my ring finger - it's a little late now, but still!! :D

The stickers are pretty, I really like them, but they are a bit stiff.
That means that it’s hard for them to stay put on my curvy nails. Even a layer
of topcoat couldn’t really hold them down; take a look at my pinkie – see how
the sticker sticks out!

But nice, yes, I like the final mani, and I love the glitter!

Number of coats: 2
Drying time: Good

Finish: A massive amount of
glitter in a clear base

Overall impression: Fantastic
glitter! I love glitters that are more than just toppers.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

I was thrilled when Laura from Ellagee asked if anybody was interested
in a few unreleased prototypes. Yes please!! They obviously don’t have names,
so I’ll just refer to them after what they look like. So this one is Green
Glitter.

I have layered it. I think I could have made this opaque on its own in
three coats, but I honestly wasn’t in the mood for that. So I applied one layer
of Golden Rose Matte Velvet #107, which is my to go purple base for nail art. I
love the fact that you can make it opaque in one coat.

When the purple was dry I applied a layer of Green Glitter. It’s easy to work
with and the glitter spreads out evenly and easily and dries relatively fast. I
applied one coat of Essence Gel Look Topcoat before I took my pictures.

So here’s one coat of Green Glitter over purple:

I love that there are various sizes of glitter throughout the polish.

Glittery, sparkly, lovely…

Here are the two polishes together. Note how much I’ve used of the
Golden Rose! O_o

Number of coats: 1
Drying time: Good

Finish: Glitter in a clear
base

Overall impression: This is
a nice, green glitter that can be used over many colours.

When I can’t decide on what to wear on my nails, I often ask my
boyfriend to pick a random colour. Today he picked green, and I was sure that Hidden
Oasis was green until I actually got it onto my nails. Now I’m not so sure.

Let me show you what I’m talking about in a minute. The formula is good
and easy to work with. It took two coats to make this opaque and the drying
time between the coats is good.

The colour on my nails wasn’t really green though, more teal. It turns
out that the golden shimmer mixed with the teal tricked me into believing that
the polish was actually green. Funny that!

Here’s what it looks like; two coats and no topcoat:

Pretty
shimmer, yes? I know I like it!

Here’s an
intentionally blurred picture to show off the holo goodness:

Here’s a low
light picture. All the shimmer almost look like microflecks!

I stamped
swirls on it. I used a motif from the stamping plate Q-Girl010 and I stamped with
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri “Whirlwind
White”. I love that for stamping.

Here’s my
final mani:

And a low
light shot:

I really
like Hidden Oasis, even though it tricked me into believing it was green! :D

Number of coats: 2
Drying time: Pretty good

Durability: Good

Removal: No worries
Overall impression: Great colours and I love the mix of holo and shimmer!

Saturday, December 27, 2014

I’ve wanted
to get this off my chest for quite a while now, and today is the day.

It’s a well
known fact that indie-makers and bloggers go together hand in hand. The
indie-makers make pretty polishes and us bloggers display them on our blogs.
Sometimes we get the polishes for free in return for a review, most of the time we
buy them ourselves. Fact is that our blogs are a huge display of pretties,
just wanting their ten minutes of fame.

There’s
nothing wrong with that.

What really
bugs me is that so few want to show the true colours of the polishes, so to
speak. Many are the times where I’ve fallen in love with a polish on a blog,
bought it, only to find out that it doesn’t at all look like the pictures I’ve
just seen on my monitor. Photoshop and similar enhancers, ladies, are not
really your friends, but sneaky tricksters who want to blow your cover and show
you up as a visual teller of untruths. Then people who read your blogs stop
liking you so much, and treat what you say, and show, with a well earned
measure of distrust and disbelief. Catch me once, sure, go ahead - but you
won’t do it twice. Credibility is fairly hard to achieve, so easy to lose.

It’s not
just enhancing of colours and changing of colour depth and god knows what else
tricks some girls use to make the polish prettier. It’s also the fact that so
many girls chose not to show what a polish looks like in natural lighting.
Everybody knows that a holo looks great in the sun and I obviously want to see
that too. But I spend way more time indoors than I do in the sun, so I want at
least one picture of what the polish looks like in indoor environment. Is that
too much to ask?

I saw a
beautiful polish in a Facebook group. It looked fantastic, and the holo flame
was adorable. I asked if anybody had a photo of it in lower lights and the
girls snorted! Why would I want to see that? There were already beautiful
pictures of the polish! And there were. I bought the polish, and it looks
adorable in the sunshine. It doesn’t look good on me at all in lower lights, it
turns out that it’s not my colour. What a waste of $11 plus postage!

So: Dear
indie-makers, dear bloggers. Please don’t let your egos come in the way. Please
show us what the polishes really look like, not how they should look in your
head. That would be honest advertising!

A England’s
Dragon has been sitting in my box of untrieds ever since it came out, so it’s been
there for quite a while now. I think it’s because it’s more autumn-y than I
usually wear – I’m definitely not an Autumn girl.

But today I’m going to take it all the way, because Autumn is running
out!

Here’s my final Autumn mani:

And here’s how it all started! Two easy coats of A England’s Dragon –
great formula, good drying time:

On top of that a layer of “Tequila Lime Glitter” from an indie brand
called MMM! Nails. I got this in a swap, and it’s the only bottle I’ve had from
that brand. It’s a clear base with green microglitter and silver hexes. I
didn’t fish for the hexes and I only got a couple of them.

Then I stamped on it. I found a leaf motif on the stamping plate
Apipila01 and I made a stamping gradient with two polishes from Sally Hansen’s
Insta-Dri collection: Lightening, a crème yellow, and Orange Impulse, an orange
crème. This picture is taken before I topcoated it.

And here’s a flash picture:

The four polishes I used:

This is way out of my comfort zone – I don’t wear any Autumn colours,
clothes or manis, as a rule. But I must admit that I think it’s pretty cool.
What say you?

Dragon:

Number of coats: 2

Drying time: Good

Finish: Scattered holo
Overall impression: A England
is a great brand that makes good quality polishes. Dragon is no exception!

Friday, December 26, 2014

Fruit of the Poisonous Tree is from the Welcome to Storybrook collection
and is quite the most gorgeous polish in the collection. The colour is rich,
deep, sexy and vampy - just to mention a few of the superlatives that spring to
mind.

The formula is fantastic and the polish is almost self-applying. The
drying time is a bit on the slow side but the coverage is really good. You
could get away with one coat of this if you were in a hurry, although I used
two coats and it did make a difference: It made the colour even richer!

Take a look at two coats and a thin layer of topcoat:

Look at those sparkles! Aren’t they just amazing???

The polish is also gorgeous in low lights. I seriously love this shade
of purple.

I gazed at it for a long while, not really wanting to cover any of this
prettiness up! At the end I went for a bit of glitter by the base of my nails;
I used Delush Polish’s Nue Girl for that and I just sponged it one with a
makeup sponge. I sealed the whole thing up with another layer of topcoat and
here’s the final mani: